You can hear me making the case against the Tories’ abolition of student maintenance grants below here:

The abolition of maintenance grants is a Tory policy that deliberately targets students from the lowest income families, who are working hard and trying to do the right thing to get on in life. As a direct result of the Tories’ actions, students from the most deprived backgrounds will leave university with substantially higher debts than their peers who are better off.

The priority has to be ensuring everyone – regardless of their background or income – gets the best opportunities in life and is able to get on. This means ensuring that those who want to go to university are able to. It also means focusing on early years education, as most people’s chances of getting a good education and going to university are determined in the very earliest years of life.